Sinfonia Varsovia on French tour

The Polish orchestra is billed to perform 12 concerts in Nantes and five in the towns of the Loire region (La Roche-sur-Yon, Cholet, Fontenay-Le-Comte, La Flèche, Saumur).

The motto of the 21st edition of La Folle Journée is 'Passions de l'âme et du coeur' (The Passions of the Heart and Soul) and the programme of Sinfonia Varsovia concerts, apart from a wide selection of works by composers from Haydn and Mozart to Grieg and Beethoven, includes Polish music – Chopin's Piano Concerto No.2 (with Philippe Giusiano, Anna Queffélec and Yulianna Avdeeva as the soloists), the symphonic poem 'The Steppe' by Zygmunt Noskowski and Henryk Mikołaj Górecki's Third Symphony (The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs), with the Norwegian soprano Marita Solberg.

Later this year La Folle Journée moves to Spain (March), Japan (May) and Poland (September).

During the first fifteen years of its activity (1984-99), Sinfonia Varsovia made many recordings and toured widely with Yehudi Menuhin, its Principal Guest Conductor. It has also performed under such famous conductors as Claudio Abbado, Charles Dutoit, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Jacek Kaspszyk, Marc Minkowski, and Krzysztof Penderecki. (mk)